My Life in the Little Brown House, part 17: Newspaper Comics and Crosswords

About the only feature of the Messenger that got much attention from me aside from the comics was the daily crossword puzzle. I recall attempting them, although how often or consistently I don’t know. As for my parents I really wonder if they ever really had the time or leisure to sit down and really read the Messenger (or the weekly Gowrie News which they also subscribed to). This was certainly the case with my father. I have the vague recollection of my mother sitting down with the paper in the early afternoon when there may have been a lull in the daily schedule for her.

The passing attraction to the crossword puzzle for me was indeed a forerunner of the interest in them that has developed in retirement years when there was more time for such frivolous pursuits. During my bachelor years, after the move to the San Francisco Bay Area, I subscribed for awhile to the Saturday Review of Literature (during the tenure of Norman Cousins as editor and I believe owner) and I would do the double acrostic puzzles occasionally, but they have never had quite the hold on my liking that the simpler crossword puzzles have had. Actually I got started on the double acrostics when a Shell colleague of mine, Del Ryvring [sp?], also a bachelor, indicated that doing them was one of his hobbies.

In thinking back on the possible reasons for the development of the activity which I have had in retirement of drawing, water-coloring etc., I wonder if my interest in cartoon strips at an early age was the root cause. One of the cartoon strips of the time was Flash Gordon (drawn by one Alex Raymond) and the pictures he drew were far beyond the level of the rest of the cartoons of the time, and indeed truly works of art in the pen-and-ink medium. I recall admiring them at the time, and I still marvel at his virtuosity. The full page Sunday section was a real panorama of pictorial skill. Raymond’s drawings were, in my opinion, much more works of art that the vapid offerings of most galleries of today.











Flash Gordon comic strip